Who are good mentors?

Mentorship is an honour. It is the privilege given to someone by someone, who is placing their trust in an individual, to guide them, steer them and to direct them in discovering and developing their full potential, within the parameters of their unique personality, design, purpose and destiny.

Mentorship can be done in several ways. A mentoring program provides the possibility to be mentored in certain areas of your life that needs no more than the Impartation of the Spirit in Wisdom and by Revelation.

These Seeds of Impartation will be what the Holy Spirit will use to grow into a fruitful harvest in your life.

This kind of Impartation allows you to be successfully mentored by a trusted and worthy mentor, whom you otherwise would have no access to, who will add immense value to your life through personal, practical life experience, combined with having being guided by the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit, themselves.

Personal mentoring is the rarest kind of mentoring, because it demands the time needed from both the mentor and mentee to spend in each other’s company.

This kind of mentoring goes beyond the Impartation of Wisdom, to bring a practical Impartation of personal experience by being in the presence of your mentor.

This adds the dynamic of being able to observe your mentor in his or her strengths and weaknesses, and to learn what your strengths and weaknesses are also!

A good mentor would however first invite someone to complete their foundational mentoring program, before considering a mentee to be mentored by them in person.

A good mentor is someone who will teach you from life experience. It is an individual who will have the imparted Wisdom of God that has been worked through their own life and proven in their own living, in a real, authentic and practical way.

• Good mentors are good students!

They teach to the measure of what they have come to learn themselves.

• A good mentor is a worthy teacher.

He is a veteran in life and has grown into the knowledge he imparts.

• Good mentors do not mentor from books, or from theory.

They are ‘made’ leaders who have journeyed the way in which they are leading others to go. They are authentic to the core and are pioneers, setting spiritual beacons for others to follow, along their own way of discovery.

• Good mentors never replicate themselves in others.

They impart Wisdom in others, allowing them to receive the Impartation of the Holy Spirit, while being developed into the unique individuals, and unique purpose and destiny for their lives.

They impart principles without imprinting themselves upon their mentees.

• Good mentors are not threatened by the talent of their mentees.

They celebrate their success and are passionate to seeing them grow into the full potential of who they are. They are elated when their mentees achieve greater heights than themselves.

• Good mentors are never controlling.

They do not force or push. They impart and they allow the imparted Seed of the Holy Spirit to grow organically in producing change in those yielded under their care.

GOOD mentees

Being successfully mentored is not only the responsibility of a good mentor, but also requires a good mentee.

It should be as much of a privilege for a mentee to be mentored by a good mentor, as it is for the mentor to have the opportunity to impart Wisdom into the life of the mentee.

Although a mentee is seeking to grow to maturity, a level of maturity is needed if to be successfully mentored. A mentee must be mature enough to be taught.

The childish and immature individual who considers themselves to be wiser and more up to date than others, will fail to become successful mentees.

Emotionally underdeveloped individuals make poor mentees.

• Humility is essential if you seek to be mentored.

A spirit of pride and of knowing better, will soon put you at conflict with your mentor and will be your stumbling block in actually being taught in a meaningful way.

• Don’t ask for a mentor when you are actually seeking a puppet.

A few years ago I had a young man who begged me to mentor him. He seemed to be so eager to learn. I eventually agreed.

However, not too long after our journey together began, he began informing me of his decisions that he had already taken, without asking for my input in advising him in my capacity as mentor.

He was soon working hard at convincing me that what he had decided to do was the right thing, and that he was in total control of the situation, all the while going against my advice.

I kept warning him as I saw him slipping further and further away from attaining his destiny, but he kept assuring me that he was in control, until he finally was completely out of control!

I soon realised that he was not looking for a mentor to follow, but a puppet who would blindly agree and support his decisions.

Someone he could have “on staff” that he could point others too, as being his “mentor”, while he was freely making his own unwise decisions, while mentoring himself!

• Be willing to learn.

A good mentee has an eager spirit to learn. They are driven to draw as much from their mentor as possible.

I remember how eager and driven I was to learn from my mentors, at a time when I was involved in something that greatly interested me.

I drew everything they would offer out of them and applied it to myself. I listened intently and wanted them to correct me wherever they observed any mistakes or flaws.

The result was that I soon excelled way beyond my peers.

There is a reason you asked to be mentored and that reason should be that you recognise that your mentor knows more than you do, has gained more experience than you have and have journeyed further than you have.

Respect these principle facts and remain in a position of being humble and willing to learn.

• Be submissive.

The only way to receive is to yield. The only way to yield is to both have and show respect towards your mentor.

• Be teachable.

So many times people argue instead of learning. It is important to be willing to let go of what you believe to be right, so that you may receive what is true.

The moment the mentee becomes wiser than the mentor, the possibility of being mentored has been compromised.

• You don’t have to understand, only to receive.

It is likely that a lot of what your mentor will teach to you, will be new and unknown to you. Sometimes it may even be difficult to process, challenging the foundations of what you’ve come to understand.

The important thing is not to understand everything, but to allow truth to impact you and to become the Seed of the Holy Spirit.

Understanding will come as the eyes of your heart (mind) become illuminated by the Seed of what the Holy Spirit sows into your heart. It’s fertile ground that is required. The rest will happen organically.

• Do not grab what should graciously be given to you.

Some years ago the Holy Spirit led me into a new season of ministry in my life. My ministry at that time was very strongly established and well known.

The Holy Spirit nudged me to pass it on to one of my peers so that the work that had been established may be taken further and may grow to new heights.

Tragically this person lacked the grace to receive what I was supposed to hand to him, but attempted to grab it instead.

Pride got in the way and caused him to be unable to receive the ministry from another, but to take it as though he did not need to receive it.

In the process he dropped the baton, and what was intended to be his, slipped through his fingers and fell to the ground.

It is so important to have a right attitude and to ask God to remove all pride from your heart.

Be gracious and receive what the Holy Spirit gives you in a meek and humble spirit.

• Honour your mentors.

There is nothing that shows a flawed character more so than the inability to show honour. Men of true character honour others and do so with pleasure.

Those who are self absorbed, self centered, self seeking and ambitious, have only themselves in mind when it comes to being honoured.

They will use and abuse, draw attention away, steal what they can from others, presenting it as though it came from themselves and do whatever it takes for them to be seen and to be the center of attraction, even at the cost of others.

If you are the center of your own universe, you will never come to learn anything from anyone legitimately.

You may obtain the information, but will lack the fruit of the transformation which that knowledge should have produced in your own life. In short, you’ll have a lot of wind without any substance to back what you are presenting.

True mentoring requires Impartation that produces change. This kind of Impartation requires a mentee to be just that, a student, gracefully learning and receiving from the heart of a mentor.

Good mentees are always ready to honour their mentors. They are unashamed that they have learned from someone, or to honour them for their content and their contribution.

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

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Johann van der Hoven has been in service of The LORD since 1991 and has hosted numerous mass revival meetings. The Holy Spirit is announcing a NEW SOUND from Heaven beginning in 2020 — The Sound of His Glory being poured out!

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